Johnson Cerda: _{Promoting Indigenous perspectives in environmental management}

Amplifying indigenous voices

While he was in college, Cerda was nominated by Amazonian Indigenous organizations to serve as co-director of an organization based in Washington, D.C., the Amazon Alliance. At the time, the Amazon Alliance sought to ensure that Indigenous Peoples’ organizations had power in any processes that affected their communities and lands. Although the organization would later dissolve, it propelled Cerda into leadership roles that allowed him to amplify the voices of his community and other Indigenous Peoples.

Shortly after completing his bachelor’s degree, Cerda started a blog whose title translates to, “News about Climate Change and the reaction of Indigenous Peoples” (Figure 2). From 2007 to 2020, the blog served as a platform for sharing information on environmental issues and policies affecting Cerda’s community and others in the Amazon Basin. The posts contained a wealth of information about Indigenous rights and environmental protection, informed by his own experiences and the perspectives and knowledge he gained in college.

Over time, the blog portrayed Cerda’s changing focus from his Kichwa community’s needs to the needs of the global Indigenous community. In addition to focusing on events relevant to his home and people, he came to recognize and elevate the common ground shared by Indigenous Peoples around the world.

For example, Cerda wrote a blog post about the formation of the first International Forum of Indigenous Peoples on Climate Change in May of 2000 (Cerda, 2009). He made the point that Indigenous communities have established practices for harvesting tropical forest products in a sustainable manner; and he advocated that Indigenous knowledge should be considered in international efforts to secure tropical forest protection. He argued that the rest of the world could learn from Indigenous communities and should recognize them for their contributions to sustainability, as he was coming to recognize that only a small percentage of Indigenous communities worldwide maintained rights to their lands.

In his Kichwa upbringing, ancestral wisdom gave meaning to community language and rituals. According to the ancestors, the Limoncocha Lagoon is an enchanted place where people learn and have formative experiences, linking past, present, and future generations (Mestanza et al., 2019). Cerda saw the disconnect between his own upbringing and the management of lands that were important for local and global resources.

To address this problem and bring decision-making that affected the Limoncocha Lagoon back to the Kichwa, Cerda realized that he would have to not only understand the international environmental policy arena but become part of it.

Including indigenous perspectives in climate change conversations

In 2009, Cerda advocated for recognition of local and Indigenous knowledge in developing strategies to mitigate the impacts of climate change, asking the provocative question, “Why … should forests be recognized and not the people have lived there for generations?” (Mongabay News, 2009).

Cerda was referring to a program called UNREDD, the United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries. The logic behind initiatives like UNREDD is to create a situation in which native people are compensated for conserving forests they might otherwise harvest. The program faced some controversy because, even though developed countries were the primary source of atmosphere-altering carbon emissions, UNREDD focused on asking developing countries such as Ecuador to make commitments to contain carbon emissions.

Cerda was a pioneer in insisting that Indigenous voices be included in any environmental decision-making about their territories, an approach now considered essential by international organizations such as the United Nations. The principle of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent, put forth in a United Nations declaration, says that an Indigenous community should be able to grant consent or not “to a certain project based on information received prior to the start of the project, free of any influence.”

Because Indigenous Peoples “own, occupy, or use a quarter of the world’s surface area,” which includes much of the remaining areas rich in biodiversity, working effectively with them contributes to achieving climate goals. As Cerda well knows, Indigenous Peoples hold valuable knowledge passed through generations about how to sustainably harvest resources. Yet, many governments recognize only a portion of land long occupied by Indigenous communities as belonging to them. (World Bank, 2023).

In a 2012 blog post, Cerda analyzed free, prior, and informed consent in policy making. In considering how carbon reduction projects might play out, he asserted that any planning should respect how Indigenous Peoples make decisions in their communities and what plans they have already made. (Cerda, 2012).

In 2014, Johnson Cerda was appointed as Conservation International’s Senior Director of the Dedicated Grant Mechanism for Conservation International. In this role, he grapples with the factors that limit the flow of international resources to Indigenous communities. His position is that government and environmental organizations must put Indigenous interests first and foremost, rather than “trying to take over lands or make all of the decisions of how to protect a certain area.” (Price, 2020).

Cerda straddles the divide between Indigenous communities living traditionally and international environmental policy-making arenas every day. He says that people from his community don’t understand how he “works” without going into the rainforest regularly. When he says that his work is at a desk, rather than with a machete, it leaves his extended family of origin confused. “How do you work without a machete? 'Impossible!' they say.” (Gomaluku Podcast, 2019).

Into the future

As of 2024, Cerda lives in the Washington, D.C., area with his wife and two children. His ongoing work via Conservation International on the Dedicated Global Mechanism supports more than a dozen countries around the world, helping prepare them to deal with climate change while capitalizing on their traditional knowledge of their environments. On Cerda’s Twitter feed, you’ll find a diverse range of news coverage on issues such as wind power; the EU’s ambitious 2040 climate target; the value of mangrove estuaries; the Indigenous lands invaded by gold miners in Brazil; Indigenous self-determination in university settings; climate change effects on human trafficking, and more.

Cerda has established himself as an invaluable keeper and sharer of knowledge at the nexus of Indigenous life and international environmental policy.